Psalm 146; Jeremiah 7:1-11
Right now, your body is doing all kinds of things to keep you alive that you don’t even think about. Your heart is beating. Your blood is circulating. Your lungs are filtering oxygen to fuel the engines of your cells and empower the comprehension of these words from your ears to your brain. All of this is a testimony to the grace and majesty and creativity of God! You. You are an amazing work of creation and a testimony to the brilliance of the Creator just because you are here. As we begin reflecting on God’s word today, I want to invite you into a state of awareness of yourself as an amazing work of creation. In order to do this, I’d like you to uncross any arms and legs. Let your feet rest flatly on the ground. You can close your eyes if you want, but the most important thing to do right now is to breathe.
It doesn’t have to be deep breaths, but it can be. If it helps to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth you can, but you don’t have to do it that way. Just breathe, and think about how you are breathing….as you breathe, think about what it means to you to say that God is near...perhaps even as close as your own breath.
Now I invite you to open your eyes and let your body take back over, but let your awareness of God’s presence remain. I’ve started us out with a little spiritual exercise today because both of our scripture readings speak about the active presence of God.
The Psalmist gives thanks for God’s presence and a bit of a gentile warning for those that reject it by rejecting those who suffer, but Jeremiah is a little less comforting and a lot more confronting!
Before we jump into the deep waters of prophecy, we probably need a little context to help us understand what’s going on. Psalm 146 is from a section of the book of Psalms that scholars believe to be written during the exile of the Hebrew people. It was written to answer questions like, “What do we do now that we don’t have a temple? How can we go on when we are cut off from our ancestral lands? Why do bad things happen to faithful people?”
The simple answer? Praise God anyway. Don’t trust in people who claim to have power. Trust in God. Who is God? God is the executor of justice – the one who gets it done. I realize that seems kind of obvious to say in church, but it also strikes me as the opposite of what we affirm in our cultural identity. Think about it. How common is it in our books and media that the hero is the hero because everyone else has either let them down or because they’ve decided that they’re the only ones who can get the job done?
This isn’t new. One of my favorite classic movie scenes is from the film Shenandoah when Jimmy Stewart is trying to keep his family together after the loss of his wife. His children remind him to say a blessing before supper, and he offers up a tired, honest, and vulnerable prayer.
“Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be eatin’ it if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway, Lord, for the food we’re about to eat. Amen.”
I don’t love it because I agree with it. I love it because it’s honest. I love it because it speaks to how we feel when we forget that it is God that fills our lungs with air and gives our heart a rhythm by which to keep us alive. The truth the Psalmist brings to the table is that God is active and present, and I think it’s pretty crucial to hear that along with the indictment of Jeremiah.
There’s one more part that I think we also need to hear. In the Old Testament, we typically see justice paired with righteousness – like we see in verses 7-9. Justice is described as fairness, particularly for those with fewer resources or choices, and God is the one who makes that happen. Here’s the kicker, though. Righteousness means being in a right relationship with God and one another.
There are still going to be widows and orphans. There are still going to be strangers and outsiders, but if we are in a right relationship with God then we are going to be as active in providing fairness (justice) as God is. We are going to be part of the solution!
Now, bear that in mind when we listen to Jeremiah in v.3 when God says, “Let me dwell with you in this place.” It kind of changes things, doesn’t it? On the surface, it sounds like a transaction. If you will be nice, I will give you a cookie. If you will do the things that have been asked of you, I will do the things I promised to do. If you will stop taking advantage of the poor, I will dwell with you.
Sounds simple, right? What if it’ not so transactional, though? What if it’s really just a matter of awareness? Psalm 139 says, “Where can I flee from your presence – even in Sheol (the land of the dead), you are there.” Maybe the plea of God to “Let me dwell with you” is more about our rejection of God – our expectation that God has left it up to us and our efforts are so consuming that we have no room in our hearts to give God any credit at all.
Of course, the indictment of Jeremiah is not about our willfulness and pride so much as it is an acknowledgment that we participate in the suffering of others. In the case of Jeremiah, he was speaking out against some specific abuses of power by both the temple and the state that may seem so foreign and removed to us that they seem bizarre to consider at all.
It kind of reminds me of one of my favorite centenarians, Al Pfeuffer, who once asked me why we say a prayer of confession. He said, “I just don’t feel like I’ve done all that stuff!” Like many of his wise words, it made me stop and think. Then I said, “Well, that’s true. You may not have done the things we pray about, but that prayer is more about the sins we allow as a people. You may not be at fault for someone else’s poverty, but we are still part of a community that allows people to fall into poverty.”
Back to Jeremiah, though, there are some things that have not changed. Verse four says, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” Have you ever heard someone say, “Don’t go to church. Be the church.” Or better yet “Going to church on Sunday doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in your garage on Monday makes you a car.”
Of course, Jeremiah was not talking to Christians, because there weren’t any yet, but we receive these words in light of what God has done for us through Christ. We also live in a different kind of society with different laws and penalties and social realities from Jeremiah, but in the end, the fact remains that God is still active and present and God is still pleading for us to recognize our connectedness with God and one another.
The beautiful thing is that, in Christ, we can come to know that God has recognized our limitations and decided to be with us anyway. That’s where we find grace in a passage like this. God isn’t waiting around like an angry parent. God isn’t hanging salvation out on a hook. God isn’t setting up transactions like a divine accountant, and to be clear, God never was.
It’s easy to take the grace of God offered through Christ and say, “Ha! We’re so much better than our Jewish forbearers.” Except that would be the exact opposite of what the Psalmist pointed out long ago and the exact opposite of what Jesus came to proclaim.
What he came to proclaim was this: Love the Lord your God with all that you have and all that you are, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
The extension of Emanuel, God with us, is not an invitation to a private club. It is the expectation that each of us is a unique and wonderful creations of God, and that through God’s love for us we understand that we are responsible to care for one another – especially those who are less fortunate.
During this troubling time of the pandemic, let us not forget to breathe. Let us not forget those who are struggling for breath and let us not forget that we are responsible – one to another and as God’s people – for those less able to care for themselves.
Next Sunday we’ll join Jeremiah at the Potter’s house (18:1-11). Until then, know of God’s joy in creating you and of the invitation to dwell with God as we care for those in need – whether it be as simple as wearing a mask or as hard as a conversation about kindness and compassion in a time when we are all feeling about as pressed as we’ve ever felt.
I truly wish I had better answers to the stress of the day, but I don’t think that I can top the words of the Psalmist. “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long. Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God!” May it be so with me. May it be so with you, and all to the glory of God – now and always. Amen!
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